Cheney leaves no paper trail. He has not always felt the necessity to discuss what he plans to say in public with the usual offices, including that of the President. Nor, we learned from Ron Suskind, has he always felt the necessity, say if the Saudis send information to the President in preparation for a meeting, to bother sending that information on to Bush. Only on the evening of September 11, 2001, did it occur to Richard A. Clarke that in his role as national security coordinator he had briefed Cheney on terrorism and also Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, but never the President. Since November 1, 2001, under this administration's Executive Order 13233, which limits access to all presidential and vice-presidential papers, Cheney has been the first vice-president in American history entitled to executive privilege, a claim to co-presidency reinforced in March 2003 by Executive Order 13292, giving him the same power to classify information as the president has.

He runs an office so disinclined to communicate that it routinely refuses to disclose who works there, even for updates to the Federal Directory, which lists names and contact addresses for government officials. "We just don't give out that kind of information," an aide told one reporter. "It's just not something we talk about." When he visits his house in Jackson Hole and the local paper spots his plane and the anti-missile battery that accompanies him, the office until recently refused to confirm his presence: "In the past, they've been kind of weird," the paper's co-editor told The Washington Post in August. "They'd say, 'His airplane's here and the missile base is here, but we can't tell you if he's here.'"

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